‘Then,’ Thorndyke continued, ‘there is another anomalous feature; the inside of the bottom is covered with elaborate decoration—just the place where decoration is most inappropriate, since it would be covered up by the contents of the casket. And, again, this decoration is etched; not engraved or chased. But etching is a very unusual process for this purpose, if it is ever used at all by Japanese metal-workers. My impression is that it is not; for it is most unsuitable for decorative purposes. That is all that I observe, so far.’
‘And what do you infer from your observations?’ Brodribb asked.
‘I should like to think the matter over,’ was the reply. ‘There is an obvious anomaly, which must have some significance. But I won’t embark on speculative opinions at this stage. I should like, however, to take one or two photographs of the casket, for reference; but that will occupy some time. You will hardly want to wait so long.’
‘No,’ said Brodribb. ‘But Miss Bonney is coming with me to my office to go over some documents and discuss a little business. When we have finished, I will come back and fetch the confounded thing.’
‘There is no need for that,’ replied Thorndyke. ‘As soon as I have done what is necessary, I will bring it up to your place.’
To this arrangement Brodribb agreed readily, and he and his client prepared to depart. I rose, too, and as I happened to have a call to make in Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn, I asked permission to walk with them.
As we came out into King’s Bench Walk I noticed a smallish, gentlemanly-looking man who had just passed our entry and now turned in at the one next door; and by the light of the lamp in the entry he looked to me like a Japanese. I thought Miss Bonney had observed him, too, but she made no remark, and neither did I. But, passing up Inner Temple Lane, we nearly overtook two other men, who—though I got but a back view of them and the light was feeble enough—aroused my suspicions by their neat, small figures. As we approached, they quickened their pace, and one of them looked back over his shoulder; and then my suspicions were confirmed, for it was an unmistakable Japanese face that looked round at us. Miss Bonney saw that I had observed the men, for she remarked, as they turned sharply at the Cloisters and entered Pump Court:
‘You see, I am still haunted by Japanese.’
‘I noticed them,’ said Brodribb. ‘They are probably law students. But we may as well be companionable;’ and with this, he, too, headed for Pump Court.
We followed our oriental friends across the Lane into Fountain Court, and through that and Devereux Court out to Temple Bar, where we parted from them; they turning westward and we crossing to Bell Yard, up which we walked, entering New Square by the Carey Street gate. At Brodribb’s doorway we halted and looked back, but no one was in sight. I accordingly went my way, promising to return anon to hear Thorndyke’s report, and the lawyer and his client disappeared through the portal.
My business occupied me longer than I had expected, but nevertheless, when I arrived at Brodribb’s premises—where he lived in chambers over his office—Thorndyke had not yet made his appearance. A quarter of an hour later, however, we heard his brisk step on the stairs, and as Brodribb threw the door open, he entered and produced the casket from his pocket.
‘Well,’ said Brodribb, taking it from him and locking it, for the time being, in a drawer, ‘has the oracle spoken; and if so, what did he say?’
‘Oracles,’ replied Thorndyke, ‘have a way of being more concise than explicit. Before I attempt to interpret the message, I should like to view the scene of the escape; to see if there was any intelligible reason why this man, Uyenishi, should have returned up Brownlow Street into what must have been the danger zone. I think that is a material question.’
‘Then,’ said Brodribb, with evident eagerness, ‘let us all walk up and have a look at the confounded place. It is quite close by.’
We all agreed instantly, two of us, at least, being on the tip-toe of expectation. For Thorndyke, who habitually understated his results, had virtually admitted that the casket had told him something; and as we walked up the Square to the gate in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, I watched him furtively, trying to gather from his impassive face a hint as to what the something amounted to, and wondering how the movements of the fugitive bore on the solution of the mystery. Brodribb was similarly occupied, and as we crossed from Great Turnstile and took our way up Brownlow Street, I could see that his excitement was approaching bursting-point.
At the top of the street Thorndyke paused and looked up and down the rather dismal thoroughfare which forms a continuation of Bedford Row and bears its name. Then he crossed to the paved island surrounding the pump which stands in the middle of the road, and from thence surveyed the entrances to Brownlow Street and Hand Court; and then he turned and looked thoughtfully at the pump.
‘A quaint old survivor, this,’ he remarked, tapping the iron shell with his knuckles. ‘There is a similar one, you may remember, in Queen Square, and another at Aldgate. But that is still in use.’
‘Yes,’ Brodribb assented, almost dancing with impatience and inwardly damning the pump, as I could see, ‘I’ve noticed it.’
‘I suppose,’ Thorndyke proceeded, in a reflective tone, ‘they had to remove the handle. But it was rather a pity.’
‘Perhaps it was,’ growled Brodribb, whose complexion was rapidly developing affinities to that of a pickled cabbage, ‘but what the d—’
Here he broke off short and glared silently at Thorndyke, who had raised his arm and squeezed his hand into the opening once occupied by the handle. He groped in the interior with an expression of placid interest, and presently reported: ‘The barrel is still there, and so, apparently, is the plunger—’ (Here I heard Brodribb mutter huskily, ‘Damn the barrel and the plunger too!”) ‘but my hand is rather large for the exploration. Would you, Miss Bonney, mind slipping your hand in and telling me if I am right?’
We all gazed at Thorndyke in dismay, but in a moment Miss Bonney recovered from her astonishment, and with a deprecating smile, half shy, half amused, she slipped off her glove, and reaching up—it was rather high for her—inserted her hand into the narrow slit. Brodribb glared at her and gobbled like a turkey-cock, and I watched her with a sudden suspicion that something was going to happen. Nor was I mistaken. For, as I looked, the shy, puzzled smile faded from her face and was succeeded by an expression of incredulous astonishment. Slowly she withdrew her hand, and as it came out of the slit it dragged something after it. I started forward, and by the light of the lamp above the pump I could see that the object was a leather bag secured by a string from which hung a broken seal.
‘It can’t be!’ she gasped as, with trembling fingers, she untied the string. Then, as she peered into the open mouth, she uttered a little cry.
‘It is! It is! It is the necklace!’
Brodribb was speechless with amazement. So was I; and I was still gazing open-mouthed at the bag in Miss Bonney’s hands when I felt Thorndyke touch my arm. I turned quickly and found him offering me an automatic pistol.
‘Stand by, Jervis,’ he said quietly, looking towards Gray’s Inn.
I looked in the same direction, and then perceived three men stealing round the corner from Jockey’s Fields. Brodribb saw them, too, and snatching the bag of pearls from his client’s hands, buttoned it into his breast pocket and placed himself before its owner, grasping his stick with a war-like air. The three men filed along the pavement until they were opposite us, when they turned simultaneously and bore down on the pump, each man, as I noticed, holding his right hand behind him. In a moment, Thorndyke’s hand, grasping a pistol, flew up—as did mine, also—and he called out sharply:
‘Stop! If any man moves a hand, I fire.’
The challenge brought them up short, evidently unprepared for this kind of reception. What would have happened next it is impossible to guess. But at this moment a police whistle sounded and two constables ra
n out from Hand Court. The whistle was instantly echoed from the direction of Warwick Court, whence two more constabulary figures appeared through the postern gate of Gray’s Inn. Our three attendants hesitated but for an instant. Then, with one accord, they turned tail and flew like the wind round into Jockey’s Fields, with the whole posse of constables close on their heels.
‘Remarkable coincidence,’ said Brodribb, ‘that those policemen should happen to be on the look-out. Or isn’t it a coincidence?’
‘I telephoned to the station superintendent before I started,’ replied Thorndyke, ‘warning him of a possible breach of the peace at this spot.’
Brodribb chuckled. ‘You’re a wonderful man, Thorndyke. You think of everything. I wonder if the police will catch those fellows.’
‘It is no concern of ours,’ replied Thorndyke. ‘We’ve got the pearls, and that finishes the business. There will be no more shadowing, in any case.’
Miss Bonney heaved a comfortable little sigh and glanced gratefully at Thorndyke. ‘You can have no idea what a relief that is!’ she exclaimed; ‘to say nothing of the treasure-trove.’
We waited some time, but as neither the fugitives nor the constables reappeared, we presently made our way back down Brownlow Street. And there it was that Brodribb had an inspiration.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said he. ‘I will just pop these things in my strong-room—they will be perfectly safe there until the bank opens to-morrow—and then we’ll go and have a nice little dinner. I’ll pay the piper.’
‘Indeed you won’t!’ exclaimed Miss Bonney. ‘This is my thanksgiving festival, and the benevolent wizard shall be the guest of the evening.’
‘Very well, my dear,’ agreed Brodribb. ‘I will pay and charge it to the estate. But I stipulate that the benevolent wizard shall tell us exactly what the oracle said. That is essential to the preservation of my sanity.’
‘You shall have his ipsissima verba,’ Thorndyke promised; and the resolution was carried, nem. con.
An hour and a half later we were seated around a table in a private room of a café to which Mr Brodribb had conducted us. I may not divulge its whereabouts, though I may, perhaps, hint that we approached it by way of Wardour Street. At any rate, we had dined, even to the fulfilment of Brodribb’s ideal, and coffee and liqueurs furnished a sort of gastronomic doxology. Brodribb had lighted a cigar and Thorndyke had produced a vicious-looking little black cheroot, which he regarded fondly and then returned to its abiding-place as unsuited to the present company.
‘Now,’ said Brodribb, watching Thorndyke fill his pipe (as understudy of the cheroot aforesaid), ‘we are waiting to hear the words of the oracle.’
‘You shall hear them,’ Thorndyke replied. ‘There were only five of them. But first, there are certain introductory matters to be disposed of. The solution of this problem is based on two well-known physical facts, one metallurgical and the other optical.’
‘Ha!’ said Brodribb. ‘But you must temper the wind to the shorn lamb, you know, Thorndyke. Miss Bonney and I are not scientists.’
‘I will put the matter quite simply, but you must have the facts. The first relates to the properties of malleable metals—excepting iron and steel—and especially of copper and its alloys. If a plate of such metal or alloy—say, bronze, for instance—is made red-hot and quenched in water, it becomes quite soft and flexible—the reverse of what happens in the case of iron. Now, if such a plate of softened metal be placed on a steel anvil and hammered, it becomes extremely hard and brittle.’
‘I follow that,’ said Brodribb.
‘Then see what follows. If, instead of hammering the soft plate, you put on it the edge of a blunt chisel and strike on that chisel a sharp blow, you produce an indented line. Now the plate remains soft; but the metal forming the indented line has been hammered and has become hard. There is now a line of hard metal on the soft plate. Is that clear?’
‘Perfectly,’ replied Brodribb; and Thorndyke accordingly continued:
‘The second fact is this: If a beam of light falls on a polished surface which reflects it, and if that surface is turned through a given angle, the beam of light is deflected through double that angle.’
‘H’m!’ grunted Brodribb. ‘Yes. No doubt. I hope we are not going to get into any deeper waters, Thorndyke.’
‘We are not,’ replied the latter, smiling urbanely. ‘We are now going to consider the application of these facts. Have you ever seen a Japanese magic mirror?’
‘Never; nor even heard of such a thing.’
‘They are bronze mirrors, just like the ancient Greek or Etruscan mirrors—which are probably ‘magic’ mirrors, too. A typical specimen consists of a circular or oval plate of bronze, highly polished on the face and decorated on the back with chased ornament—commonly a dragon or some such device—and furnished with a handle. The ornament is, as I have said, chased; that is to say, it is executed in indented lines made with chasing tools, which are, in effect, small chisels, more or less blunt, which are struck with a chasing-hammer.
‘Now these mirrors have a very singular property. Although the face is perfectly plain, as a mirror should be, yet, if a beam of sunlight is caught on it and reflected, say, on to a white wall, the round or oval patch of light on the wall is not a plain light patch. It shows quite clearly the ornament on the back of the mirror.’
‘But how extraordinary!’ exclaimed Miss Bonney. ‘It sounds quite incredible.’
‘It does,’ Thorndyke agreed. ‘And yet the explanation is quite simple. Professor Sylvanus Thompson pointed it out years ago. It is based on the facts which I have just stated to you. The artist who makes one of these mirrors begins, naturally, by annealing the metal until it is quite soft. Then he chases the design on the back, and this design then shows slightly on the face. But he now grinds the face perfectly flat with fine emery and water so that the traces of the design are completely obliterated. Finally, he polishes the face with rouge on a soft buff.
‘But now observe that wherever the chasing-tool has made a line, the metal is hardened right through, so that the design is in hard metal on a soft matrix. But the hardened metal resists the wear of the polishing buff more than the soft metal does. The result is that the act of polishing causes the design to appear in faint relief on the face. Its projection is infinitesimal—less than the hundred-thousandth of an inch—and totally invisible to the eye. But, minute as it is, owing to the optical law which I mentioned—which, in effect, doubles the projection—it is enough to influence the reflection of light. As a consequence, every chased line appears on the patch of light as a dark line with a bright border, and so the whole design is visible. I think that is quite clear.’
‘Perfectly clear,’ Miss Bonney and Brodribb agreed.
‘But now,’ pursued Thorndyke, ‘before we come to the casket, there is a very curious corollary which I must mention. Supposing our artist, having finished the mirror, should proceed with a scraper to erase the design from the back; and on the blank, scraped surface to etch a new design. The process of etching does not harden the metal, so the new design does not appear on the reflection. But the old design would. For although it was invisible on the face and had been erased from the back, it would still exist in the substance of the metal and continue to influence the reflection. The odd result would be that the design which would be visible in the patch of light on the wall would be a different one from that on the back of the mirror.
‘No doubt, you see what I am leading up to. But I will take the investigation of the casket as it actually occurred. It was obvious, at once, that the value of the thing was extrinsic. It had no intrinsic value, either in material or workmanship. What could that value be? The clear suggestion was that the casket was the vehicle of some secret message or information. It had been made by Uyenishi, who had almost certainly had possession of the missing pearls, and who had been so closely pursued that he
never had an opportunity to communicate with his confederates. It was to be given to a man who was almost certainly one of those confederates; and, since the pearls had never been traced, there was a distinct probability that the (presumed) message referred to some hiding-place in which Uyenishi had concealed them during his flight, and where they were probably still hidden.
‘With these considerations in my mind, I examined the casket, and this was what I found. The thing, itself, was a common white-metal casting, made presentable by means of lacquer. But the white metal bottom had been cut out and replaced by a plate of fine bronze—Shakudo. The inside of this was covered with an etched design, which immediately aroused my suspicions. Turning it over, I saw that the outside of the bottom was not only smooth and polished; it was a true mirror. It gave a perfectly undistorted reflection of my face. At once, I suspected that the mirror held the secret; that the message, whatever it was, had been chased on the back, had then been scraped away and an etched design worked on it to hide the traces of the scraper.
‘As soon as you were gone, I took the casket up to the laboratory and threw a strong beam of parallel light from a condenser on the bottom, catching the reflection on a sheet of white paper. The result was just what I had expected. On the bright oval patch on the paper could be seen the shadowy, but quite distinct, forms of five words in the Japanese character.
‘I was in somewhat of a dilemma, for I have no knowledge of Japanese, whereas the circumstances were such as to make it rather unsafe to employ a translator. However, as I do just know the Japanese characters and possess a Japanese dictionary, I determined to make an attempt to fudge out the words myself. If I failed I could then look for a discreet translator.
‘However, it proved to be easier than I had expected, for the words were detached; they did not form a sentence, and so involved no questions of grammar. I spelt out the first word and then looked it up in the dictionary. The translation was ‘pearls.’ This looked hopeful, and I went on to the next, of which the translation was ‘pump.’ The third word floored me. It seemed to be ‘jokkis,’ or ‘jokkish,’ but there was no such word in the dictionary; so I turned to the next word, hoping that it would explain its predecessor. And it did. The fourth word was ‘fields,’ and the last word was evidently ‘London.’ So the entire group read: ‘Pearls, Pump, Jokkis, Fields, London.’
Capital Crimes: London Mysteries Page 10